Today, the eastern federal states continue to lag behind their western peers in many important ways & have become breeding grounds for the AfD & other far-right political movements. And to think we were discouraged from playing baseball w/ Cuban students 'cuz it seemed a clash of political systems.
Love that word. I spent the summer of '86 as a language student in Leipzig in what was still the old East Germany. The GDR was praised in West Germany for its de-Nazification efforts & its anti-Nazi school curricula. Failed spectacularly post-unification, though. Likely due to economic factors.
BAP, a long-established, left-leaning band from Cologne who sing in the Kölsch dialect, in part address the targeting of gays & foreigners in "Kristallnaach" (Kristallnacht in Hochdeutsch). Sorry, I saw no subtitles in the Duck Player version of the video. Don't use Google. youtu.be/b1EkIU9cpxw
Doch habe ich das mitgekriegt ohne probleme. He's babbling that "Ausländer raus!" crap. Don't think I haven't heard it before--in east, west & united Germany. I've been around the block. About the only good thing about such screeds in the old DDR was that they were quietly directed at Russians.
Your post points to a big problem on B'sky: user confusion about what to do after creating an account. People give up because it ain't FB. Starter packs are a great idea. My niche: I've tried to help my US compatriots access trustworthy non-US sources of medical info after Trump ravaged ours.
No need to add me to any starter packs. Although I maintain a personal curation list titled 𝗟𝗶𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘁𝘆𝗹𝗲 / 𝗨𝗿𝗯𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘀𝗺 / 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁, it's just one of my areas of interest. I likely pay more attention to my music & cuisine lists. In any event, that list skews toward the geographic regions of interest to me.
Guess I'd say it depends on the mood I want to get back into. If it's Baltimore nostalgia I seek, though not necessarily of the heartwarming kind, I'd say:
"Diner" and/or "Avalon"
"Pink Flamingos" and/or "Polyester"
But more generally speaking, you can't go wrong w/ "Animal House." Toga! Toga!
Everywhere in the US, perhaps. But not in the Maldives, I suspect. You've accidentally tagged the Bluesky account of the Maldivian Democratic Party in your post. No problem. We get it. Just wish B'sky would let users edit posts.
Oooops almost missed our 1st #WorldPublicTransport day! Reminder:
without #railways we would not have opened continental interiors; moved #freight for Industrial Revolution; built #streetcars that made suburbs; dug #subways that crossed cities, ran #buses that gave #mobility to those without cars.
Didn't have my reading glasses on & therefore couldn't tell what I was looking at initially. Absolutely no idea. Thought that row of grayish-brown containers might be gas canisters of some sort. And all those knobs & such might be a display of watches. Talk about eye strain.
A DDoS attack? I gave up trying to log in after a few hours. Tried servers in various EU nations & elsewhere. But looked no further than Down Detector for an explanation. Will adjust settings to be notified of future official posts from B'sky HQ.
At least the municipal authorities used rocks--or rock-shaped building materials--to line the riverbanks. Much more tasteful & aesthetically pleasing than the unadorned concrete that some places pour in the name of flood control.
That guy irks me. Wish Skype hadn't done away with my New Jersey phone number & my unlimited US calling plan. Otherwise, I'd be chewing his ear off. At the moment, it's too pricey to call from Tokyo. And, yeah, there's the matter of the time difference. Hoping someone else does the job. Thanks.
It's also journalistic outlets that keep linking to posts--or tweets or whatever. HuffPost is among the outlets that are guilty of this practice. I do my best to be helpful--to share knowledge, particularly of the practical kind. I avoid using social media to beat people down. But I'm guilty of it.
If I've contributed to that feeling via my use of certain shorthand or other means, please accept my apologies. My beef is w/ Musk, certain high-profile (ab)users & those who amplify their messaging. How would I know, given that I don't use the platform? It's the amplifiers.
Don't give up just yet. I mentioned the interview w/ B'sky COO Rose Wang elsewhere. One thing she mentioned about the changing user base, which initially skewed liberal to left due to a mass exodus from X, is the recent influx of sports fans. That demographic is growing. Hence the Arsenal fans.
Will have more to say about Bluesky's present & future, its drawbacks & potential, & its users after I review the show notes & transcript of a podcast interview w/ B'sky COO Rose Wang released last week. She discussed its echo chamber reputation, users' dog-piling behavior & the changing user base.
It's only too apparent that it's not possible to access public info using only B'sky. FB and/or X are almost required if citizens want to avoid the hassle of visiting individual websites. RSS feeds help me cope, but they're not a fool-proof solution. Many gov't & public entities don't use B'sky yet.
Noted. I'll avoid using it. Hope you won't mind if I stick to X, as it takes up less space than Twitter. May use the latter when it's historically accurate. And, yes, I'm aware of the notice on your profile. I try not to characterize those who use X, even though some people apologize for doing so.
Oh, and that idealism turned out to be something of a façade. Many old classmates aren't civically engaged beyond following those online grifters. Don't know what the solution is, but I've noticed that my best-informed friends don't limit their sources to the US or the English language.
I tend to think that the likes of Charlie Kirk, Nick Fuentes & Laura Loomer wouldn't have gotten very far w/ my generation. But would that be because we grew up w/ an idealism forged by the post-Vietnam, -Watergate & -civil rights era? Or because we weren't easily reached, as today's youth are?
I'm American, but I've lived nearly half my life outside of the US. So I'm often out of touch & out of step w/ trends & popular opinions. More serious political commentators sometimes suggest that we simply deprive the blowhards of oxygen, but that doesn't seem practical in our 24/7 online world.
By "clean it up," do you mean edit the photo to remove all that detritus?
You're not imagining the suspicions about those who still use Twitter. I don't blame people for using it, nor do I regard all users as MAGA. I'm very aware that it's often the best place to turn for all kinds of legit updates. But I loathe Musk. Socializing? FB was good for that. Maybe I'll return.
Asia & the Global South have much been slower to join, except in the academic world. That, as I said elsewhere, is the big outlier. Scientists clearly find B'sky useful. Don't blame 'em. Wouldn't want, say, vaccine threads clogged w/ garbage replies. Debate's fine. Piling on w/ conspiracies isn't.
I don't doubt that Twitter is informative. I find it discouraging that many US entities, whether governmental, corporate, nonprofit, etc., have yet to join B'sky. Or have seemingly abandoned it. I follow many official accounts w/ 0 posts, hoping they start someday. W. Europe's outpaced the US.
My initial dislike of Twitter had more to do w/ the interface rather than the content. There were times in the distant past when hyperlinks in news articles directed me to publicly accessible tweets whose format I found unnecessarily confusing. Now, having used B'sky, I get it. Not confusing at all.
Nor do I. But I really need to give Nate Silver's analysis a read. Some estimates say up to 40% of Musk's followers are bots, fake accounts & whatnot. And there are claims that the algorithm has been tweaked to boost his posts. I'm skeptical about the reach of many self-styled influencers.
As an expat in Tokyo, I live in a multinat'l "little village." Yes, US news & opinion dominate, but not to the extent that they do Stateside. And you've seen how methodical I've been about tracking info. No wasting time on what's irrelevant. Academia, esp. science, has left X & moved here. No Musk.
Though I'm American, I'm not a monolingual English speaker. I'm as much a German & Dutch user of this site as an Anglophone one. Lëtzebuergesch, Elsässisch & Vlaams, too--if you count 'em as separate tongues. Still working on Low Saxon & Frisian, but those North Sea languages are barely represented.